'Best player in college football'? Maybe ... but there's no question Jabrill Peppers is the most versatile
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Jabrill Peppers came off the sideline with the Michigan offensive unit last Saturday against Penn State and asked quarterback Wilton Speight a question:
“OK, what I got?”
Speight pulled out the oldest playbook in football – the palm of his hand. On that, he diagrammed Peppers’ role on the play: line up as a slot receiver, come in motion right to left, and we will fake a jet sweep to you.
This is how simple an increasingly complex game can be with the most versatile man in football. Turn the Big House into the world’s largest sandlot field, draw it up with an index finger and just watch him play.
Peppers did his job on that particular play – one of his many Michigan moonlighting jobs. His day job is outside linebacker, but in reality the redshirt sophomore has performed a dizzying 13 different positional tasks this season. There are more to come.
Since he set up Michigan’s first touchdown of the day with a 53-yard punt return, the Nittany Lions were highly attuned to Peppers’ sudden presence on offense. Thus when Speight faked the jet sweep to No. 5, much of the Penn State defense pursued the highly explosive decoy.
That left a lane up the middle for running back De’Veon Smith to gain 39 yards, jump-starting yet another scoring drive in a 49-10 Michigan rout.
By merely going in motion, Jabrill Peppers can change a game. Just put him on the field – anywhere – and big things tend to happen.
“Those eye-popping plays happen every day,” coach Jim Harbaugh said. “You give him something new, for example, whether it’s an offensive snap and know he hasn’t done it before, and then he goes out to practice and everybody is just looking like, ‘Nobody’s done it that well. Guys that play that position don’t do it that well.’
“Jabrill is really good at football. That’s kind of become what we say.”
Jabrill Peppers is really good at football – perhaps as good at it as anyone in the nation. And football has been good to him – as a release, as an escape, as a vehicle that has carried an angry boy to a happy place.
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The special teams meeting is set to start at 2:15, and Jabrill Peppers keeps a watchful eye on the clock. He doesn’t want to be late. This is Wisconsin week, a battle of two unbeaten teams, and the stakes are increasing with each victory.
But ask him about his chosen sport and he will disengage from the urgency that is a daily byproduct of Harbaugh’s program. He will step back from the moment and appreciate the bigger picture.
“Me and football,” Peppers says, “we’ve got a real good relationship. It got me out of a lot of bad situations. It started as a way to channel my aggression and my anger.”
His nickname is “Breezy,” but Peppers played more like a tornado – swirling malevolence driven from within. The anger came from his precarious existence amid an urban New Jersey culture that swallowed up many people in Peppers’ life.
His father, Terry, went to prison on weapons charges when Jabrill was 7, and stayed there for more than 10 years. There was suspected gang activity, according to reports.
His older brother, Don Curtis, was murdered at a Chinese restaurant in Newark when Jabrill was 14. At that time, Jabrill himself was in danger of taking his life in the wrong direction – but Don’s death convinced him to find a better way.
“I had a lot of role models who weren’t doing the right thing,” Peppers said. “It was not your typical upbringing – you see a lot of things young people don’t necessarily need to see. You had to grow up a lot faster.”
Jabrill was the youngest of a sprawling group of brothers and cousins, and they did everything together. They would play basketball until the games got too contentious, then switch to football. After that, they would go back to a cousin’s house and make music, recording rap songs. (That remains a favorite pursuit of Jabrill’s, something he takes almost as seriously as his football.)
As he got older and life grew rockier, football provided an outlet to mature and thrive in a safer environment. His blossoming talent was too valuable to waste on the streets.
While growing up in East Orange, his mother, Ivory Bryant, taught him about sacrificing for others. She instilled a work ethic he carried onto the field and into the classroom, where Jabrill always made good grades.
“She never made excuses, when one would give her a pass to make an excuse,” Peppers said. “She just always found a way. Some nights she didn’t eat so I could eat.”
His Pop Warner football coach, Darren Fisher, stepped in to provide male guidance. Fisher had heard word of a young star athlete the same age as his son, Safee, and when he saw Peppers play basketball he knew the stories were true.
Fisher coached him on the Montclair Bulldogs, but his biggest role was off the field.
“He trusted me,” Fisher said. “With that trust, I had to deliver. I saw what he was lacking. As a father and as a man, I had to provide that for him. I had to help him understand that his father wasn’t there because he made a mistake, not because he didn’t love him. He just didn’t know how to express himself, with what he was dealing with in life.”
Peppers became fiercely loyal to his Bulldogs teammates. Fisher recalled one halftime when he was laying into his son, who played quarterback, telling him that he was through for the game. His best player interceded.
“[Jabrill] came up to me and grabbed me by my chest,” Fisher recalled. “He’s about 13. I’m 6-foot-2, 250 pounds. But he’s grabbed me saying, ‘No, Coach Fisher, no. We need Safee.’
“He was coming to the aid of one of his friends. He was such a teammate.”
By high school, Peppers was a star in the making. By his senior year, he was ranked the No. 3 recruit in the country by Rivals.com. He was really good, and he was ready to follow a boyhood dream out of the ghetto and into the Midwest to Michigan.
It was around then that Terry Peppers was released from prison. His relationship with Jabrill remains a work in progress, according to the son.
“We’re trying,” Jabrill said with a sigh. “We’ve got more than enough lost time to make up for. We’re trying.”
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Jack Harbaugh is around the Michigan football facility just about every day. The 77-year-old patriarch of a coaching family loves being around the school where he was an assistant to Bo Schembechler in the 1970s, and he loves being around son Jim’s program.
Ask him about Jabrill Peppers, and his eyes sparkle. For a guy whose coaching career stretches back to the early 1960s, this is a throwback player.
“It puts a smile on my face watching him,” the elder Harbaugh said. “For me, it links the past with the future. When I played and started coaching, it was single-platoon football – your fullback was a linebacker, your halfback was a cornerback. Nobody ever left the field. This is a flashback.”
In an era of micro-specialization – with third-down backs and pass rushers and cover guys – Peppers is a one-platoon player if there ever was one. Here are all the positions he has played in Michigan’s first four games: outside linebacker, slot/nickel cornerback, outside cornerback, free safety, strong safety, inside linebacker, slot receiver, outside receiver, running back, punt returner, kickoff returner, gunner on punt coverage and “hold-up” guy on punt returns. At some point he will play wildcat quarterback as well, and he will throw a pass.
Right now, Peppers has the most intriguing combination of stats in the country. He is tied for the national lead in tackles for loss with 9 ½, but he also is third nationally in average punt return (22.7 yards per game). He will lay the wood in run support, cover receivers one-on-one or take handoffs on the other side of the ball.
“It’s almost criminal what we ask him to do,” defensive coordinator Don Brown has said.
“He’s got to be the best player in college football right now,” said Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst, who has to gameplan for Peppers on Saturday.
For Jim Harbaugh, everything is a competition. And among Michigan’s internal competitions is for helmet stickers, which are awarded for big plays. Harbaugh noted Monday that Peppers has gotten the most helmet stickers in all four games this season.
And he wants to do more. Peppers says he likes a high play count “to keep the blood circulating.” He has taken to standing right behind Harbaugh when the offense is on the field, just in case he’s called upon.
“He wants to do as much as possible,” Harbaugh said. “He’s like a bull pawing the ground ready to attack.”
If Peppers keeps piling up his three-phase array of statistics and Michigan keeps winning, he will be in the running to become just the second primary defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy. The first was another Wolverine, Charles Woodson, Peppers’ favorite player growing up. He and the rest of the nation have a long way to go to catch Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson, but there’s a lot of season left to do it.
And when the season is over, Peppers also will have a decision to make about his football future.
“I personally think that if he wins the Heisman, he’ll come out [in the NFL draft],” Fisher said. “But he doesn’t want to deal with it. He wants to focus on his grades and his school and his team.”
In the meantime, Michigan can keep drawing up plays for Jabrill Peppers on the palm of the quarterback’s hand. As the young man said, he has a good relationship with football.
And it’s only going to get better.
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